For more than 200 years, gray whales have been absent from Atlantic waters, but a rare sighting of one near New England may have been a result of climate change.
For years, whale watching enthusiasts have flocked to West Coast shores to catch a glimpse of migrating gray whales. These gentle giants inhabit waters in the Pacific Ocean, while their numbers in the Atlantic Ocean gradually dwindled to the point of extirpation, or local extinction, centuries ago. It came as a colossal shock, then, when a single gray whale was spotted on the other side of the country near New England earlier this month.
“My brain was trying to process what I was seeing, because this animal was something that should not really exist in these waters," said Kate Laemmle, a research technician who was in the plane, in a press release.
Eastern North Pacific gray whales feed up north during the summer, and then migrate south in the fall. Calves are usually born around January or February off the coast of Mexico. The following months are spent migrating back north, attracting droves of avid whale watchers in the U.S. “This sighting highlights how important each survey is. While we expect to see humpback, right, and fin whales, the ocean is a dynamic ecosystem, and you never know what you’ll find,” said Orla O'Brien, associate research scientist in the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium, in the release.in recent years due to rising global temperatures.
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